Eskimos set dubious points record

Hamilton Tiger-Cats players celebrate with teammate Chris Williams after he scored a touchdown in the second half of their CFL game against the Edmonton Eskimos in Hamilton Saturday. Fred Thornhill, Reuters

GERRY MODDEJONGE, QMI Agency

EDMONTON - While it wasn’t the worst points margin the Edmonton Eskimos have ever lost by at Ivor Wynne Stadium, Saturday’s 51-8 defeat did set a club record.

And not the good kind, either.

After taking an eight-point lead with the only points of the first quarter against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the Eskimos took the rest of the afternoon off.

Over the next three quarters, the Ticats went on a run of 51 unanswered points, which is the longest run of its kind allowed by the Eskimos in club history.

“In fact, this is the first time to the very best of my knowledge that Edmonton has ever allowed 50 points-plus unanswered,” said CFL head statistician Steve Daniel. “The nearest that we have is that Saskatchewan scored 48-straight points on Oct. 25, 2008, only to have the Eskimos score 3 points late in the game.”

In 1998, the Eskimos lost 54-8 in Hamilton’s aptly nicknamed Never Win Stadium, but didn’t allow the run of consecutive points seen Saturday.

After a missed 48-yard field goal by Grant Shaw was knelt in the end zone for a single point on their opening drive, running back Jerome Messam accounted for the rest of Edmonton’s points by scoring his first touchdown of the season.

“I got a touchdown, but that’s not the point. We went out there and got our asses beat,” said Messam, whose one-yard TD run went along with four other carries for just seven more yards in a game that saw Edmonton earn a total of 56 rushing yards on a dozen combined carries. “I think we ran the ball well. We got down so we had to throw.”

The longest pass was from Kerry Joseph to Fred Stamps, who set up Messam’s touchdown with his longest reception of the season, which went for 59 of Edmonton’s 357 passing yards.

“S--t, we can only go up from here,” said Messam, who had his biggest game in the CFL to date in Hamilton a year ago with 139 yards on 15 carries and two touchdowns. “We haven’t taken too many losses like this in the past couple years, so it’s tough.